Are there any risks or side effects associated with the cat microchipping process? - Countryside Veterinary Clinic
I've never seen it. I've never seen a cat scratch it. I've never seen them be in pain from it. There has never been any indication that it causes cancer. I don't believe there are any negative associations with microchipping a cat at all.
Is microchipping painful for my cat? - Countryside Veterinary Clinic
Certainly doesn't seem to be. I've microchipped hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cats, and it's a syringe with a needle on it. We just place it right under the skin. We barely hear a peep out of them, and they're all done. We just put the hair back. It doesn't bleed. The microchip doesn't migrate, and it's done in no time flat.
Where in my cat's body will the microchip go? - Countryside Veterinary Clinic
Always between the shoulder blades at the back of the neck. It's uniform, so everybody knows across the country, across the world, where to look for a microchip on a cat.
How do I get my cat microchipped? - Countryside Veterinary Clinic
Here at Countryside, you just call and make an appointment, and we just do it right on a regular examination appointment. If they're kittens, we almost always ask you while they're here, "Would you like us to get them microchipped?" Some animals aren't microchipped until they're here for a spay or a neuter, but it does not require anesthesia. It's not a surgery. It's a speedy procedure.
How is the microchip implanted in my cat? - Countryside Veterinary Clinic
Well, good question. We use HomeAgain microchips. These sterile syringes come in little packages. Inside the syringe is a sterile microchip. They also give you an identification card, like a social security card, that you can keep in your wallet. We keep some of the numbers in our records, and then they also have a tag if you want to put the microchipping information on that.
What we do is we open up this sterile microchip. It's just like a syringe, as if we’re vaccinating your cat for a distemper vaccine or a rabies vaccine. We always put it between the shoulder blades at the back of the neck. We pull the skin up just a little bit. We insert it right under there while they're wide awake, just like a vaccine. It's not a surgery. And then that number has been implanted in this cat.
To check on it, we have a scanner. We have two scanners. This is a big industrial-use scanner that we use all the time. We go over to the kitty. We know where everybody places them in the same area. We scan over that area, and then the microchip number comes up, and then we know that it has a unique number. We can call the company and find out who that belongs to.
We also have this. This is a personal use scanner that people can buy at home, and the beauty of it is when we microchip your cat these days, it also will tell their body temperature. Any cat that has been vaccinated with the new microchips will not only pick up their microchip number when we scan them, but it will also tell their body temperature. So people at home might have that to be able to monitor their cat's body temperature.